Dragonsong (dragon riders of pern)

by Anne McCaffrey

  Menolly gave a last look at the beach, water at least ankle deep on both ends of the little cove. She glanced upward, past the ledge. She was a good halfway up the cliff now, and she thought she could see enough hand and foot holds ahead.

  “Good bye!” She was answered by a trill of chirps, and she chuckled as she imagined the scene: the queen marshalling her bronzes to position her eggs just right.

  Menolly did not make the cliff top without a few anxious moments. She was exhausted when she finally flopped on the sea grasses at the summit, and her left hand ached from unaccustomed gripping and effort. She lay there for some time, until her heart stopped thudding in her ribs and her breath came more easily. An inshore breeze dried her face, cooling her; but that reminded her of the emptiness of her stomach. Her exertions had reduced the rolls in her pouch to crumby fragments, which she gobbled as fast as she could find them.

  All at once the enormity of her adventure struck her, and she was torn between laughter and awe. To prove to herself that she’d actually done what she remembered, she crept cautiously to the bluff edge. The beach was completely underwater. The sandy wallow where the fire lizard eggs had baked was being tideswept smooth. The rubble that had gone over the edge with

  her had been absorbed or washed away. When the tide retreated, all evidence of her energies to save herself and the clutch would be obliterated. She could see the protuberance of rock down which the queen had rolled her eggs but not a sign of a fire lizard. The waves crashed with firm intent against the Dragon Stones when she gazed out to sea, but no bright motes of color flitted against the somber crags.

  Menolly felt her cheek. The fire lizard’s scratch was crusted with dried blood and sand.

  “So it did happen!”

  However did the little queen know I could help her? No one had ever suggested that fire lizards were stupid. Certainly they’d been smart enough for endless Turns to evade every trap and snare laid to catch them. The creatures were so clever, indeed, that there was a good deal of doubt about their existence, except as figures of overactive imaginations. However, enough trustworthy men had actually seen the creatures, at a distance, like her brother Alemi when he’d spotted some about the Dragon Stones, that most people did accept their existence as fact.

  Menolly could have sworn that the little queen had understood her. How else could Menolly have helped her? That proved how smart the little beast was. Smart enough certainly to avoid the boys who tried to capture them…Menolly was appalled. Capture a fire lizard? Pen it up? Not, Menolly supposed with relief, that the creature would stay caught long. It only had to pop between.

  Now why hadn’t the little queen just gone between with her eggs, instead of arduously transporting them one by one? Oh, yes, between was the coldest place known. And cold would do the eggs harm. At least it did dragon eggs harm. Would the clutch be all right now in the cold cavern? Hmmm. Menolly peered below. Well, if the queen had as much sense as she’d already shown, she’d get all her followers to come lie on the eggs and keep them warm until they did hatch.

  Menolly turned her pouch inside out, hoping for some crumbs. She was still hungry. She’d find enough early fruits and some of the succulent reeds to eat, but she was curiously loath to leave the bluff. Though, it was unlikely that the queen, now her need was past, would reappear.

  Menolly rose finally and found herself stiff from the unaccustomed exercise. Her hand ached in a dull way, and the long scar was red and slightly swollen. But, as Menolly flexed her fingers, it seemed that the hand opened more easily. Yes, it did. She could almost extend the fingers completely. It hurt, but it was a stretchy-hurt. Could she open her hand enough to play again? She folded her fingers as if to chord. That hurt, but again, it was a stretchy-hurt. Maybe if she worked her hand a lot more…She had been favoring it until today when she hadn’t given it a thought. She’d used it to climb and carry and everything.

  “Well, you did me a favor, too, little queen,” Menolly called, speaking into the breeze and waving her hands high. “See? My hand is better.”

  There was no answering chirp or sound, but the soft whistle of the seaborne breeze and the lapping of the waves against the bluff. Yet Menolly liked to think that her words had been heard. She turned inland, feeling considerably relieved and rather pleased with the moming’s work.

  She’d have to scoot now and gather what she could of greens and early berries. No point in trying for spiderclaws with the tide so high.

  Chapter 5

  Oh, Tongue, give sound to joy and sing

  Of hope and promise on dragonwing.

  No one, as usual, noticed Menolly when she got back to the Hold. Dutifully she saw the harbormaster and told him about the tides.

  “Don’t you go so far, girl,” he told her kindly. ‘Thread’s due any day now, you know. How’s the hand?”

  She mumbled something, which he didn’t hear anyway, as a shipmaster shouted for his attention.

  The evening meal was hurried since all the masters were going off to the Dock Cavern to check tide, masts and ships. In the bustle Menolly could keep to herself.

  And she did—seeking the cubicle and the safety of her bed as soon as possible. There she hugged to herself the incredible experience of the morning. She was certain that the queen had understood her. Just like the dragons, fire lizards knew what was in the mind and heart of a person. That’s why they disappeared so easily when boys tried to trap them. They’d liked her singing, too.

  Menolly gave herself a squeeze, ignoring the spasm of pain in her now stiff hand. Then she tensed, remembering that the bronzes had been waiting to see what the queen would do. She was the clever one, the audacious one. What was it Petiron was always quoting? “Necessity breeds solution.”

  Did fire lizards really understand people, even when they kept away from them, then, Menolly puzzled again. Of course, dragons understood what their riders were thinking, but dragons Impressed at Hatching to their riders. The link was never broken, and the dragon would only hear that one person, or so Petiron had said. So how had the little queen understood her?

  “Necessity?”

  Poor queen! She must have been frantic when she realized that the tide was going to cover her eggs! Probably she’d been depositing her clutches in that cove for who knows how long? How long did fire lizards live? Dragons lasted the life of their rider. Sometimes that wasn’t so long, now that Thread was dropping. Quite a few riders had been so badly scored they’d died and so had their dragons. Would the little fire lizards have a longer life, being smaller and not in so much danger? Questions darted through Menolly’s mind, like fire lizards’ flashing, she thought, as she cuddled into the warmth of her sleeping fur. She’d try to go back tomorrow, maybe, with food. She rather thought fire lizards would like spiderclaws, too, and maybe then she’d get the queen’s trust. Or maybe it would be better if she didn’t go back tomorrow? She should stay away for a few days. Then, too, with Thread falling so often, it was dangerous to go so far from the safety of the Hold.

  What would happen when the fire lizard eggs hatched? What a sight that would be! Ha! All the lads in the Sea Hold talking about catching fire lizards and she, Menolly, had not only seen but talked to them and handled their eggs! And if she were lucky, she might even see them hatching, too. Why, that would be as marvelous as going to a dragon Hatching at one of the Weyrs! And no one, not even Yanus, had been to a Hatching!

  Considering her exciting thoughts, it was a wonder that Menolly was able to sleep. The next morning her hand ached and throbbed, and she was stiff from the fall and the climbing. Her half-formed notion of going back to the Dragon Stones’ cove was thwarted by the weather, of all things. A storm had blown in from the sea that night, lashing the harbor with pounding waves. Even the Dock Cavern waters were turbulent, and a wind whipped with such whimsical force that walking from Hold to Cavern was dangerous.

  The men gathered in the Great Hall in the morning, mending gear and yarning. Mavi organized her women for an exh
austive cleaning of some of the inner Hold rooms. Menolly and Sella were sent down to the glow storage so often that Sella vowed she didn’t need light to show her the way anymore.

  Menolly worked willingly enough, checking glows in every single room in the Hold. It was better to work than to think. That evening she couldn’t escape the Great Hall. Since everyone had been in all day, everyone needed entertainment and was going. The Harper would surely play. Menolly shuddered. Well, there was no help for it. She had to hear music sometime. She couldn’t avoid it forever. And at least she could sing along with the others. But she soon found she couldn’t even have that pleasure. Mavi gestured to her when the Harper began to tune his gitar. And when the Harper beckoned for everyone to join in the choruses, Mavi pinched Menolly so hard that she gasped.

  “Don’t roar. You may sing softly as befits a girl your age,” Mavi said. “Or don’t sing at all.”

  Across the Hall, Sella was singing, not at all accurately and loud enough to be heard in Benden Hold; but when Menolly opened her mouth to protest, she got another pinch.

  So she didn’t sing at all but sat there by her mother’s side, numb and hurt, not even able to enjoy the music and very conscious that her mother was being monstrously unfair.

  Wasn’t it bad enough she couldn’t play anymore—yet—but not to be allowed to sing? Why, everyone had encouraged her to sing when old Petiron had been alive. And been glad to hear her. Asked her to sing, time and again.

  Then Menolly saw her father watching her, his face stern, one hand tapping not so much to the time of the music but to some inner agitation. It was her father who didn’t want her to sing! It wasn’t fair! It just wasn’t fair! Obviously they knew and were glad she hadn’t come before. They didn’t want her here.

  She wrenched herself free from her mother’s grip and, ignoring Mavi’s hiss to come back and behave herself, she crept from the Hall. Those who saw her leave thought sadly that it was such a pity she’d hurt her hand and didn’t even want to sing anymore.

  Wanted or not, creeping out like that would send Mavi looking for her when there was a pause in the evening’s singing. So Menolly took her sleeping furs and a glow and went to one of the unused inner rooms where no one would find her. She brought her clothes, too. If the storm cleared, she’d be away in the morning to the fire lizards. They liked her singing. They liked her!

  Before anyone else was up, she had risen. She gulped down a cold klah and ate some bread, stuffed more in her pouch and was almost away. Her heart beat fast while she struggled with the big metal doors of the Hold entrance. She’d never opened them before and hadn’t appreciated how very solid they were. She couldn’t, of course, bar them again, but there was scarcely any need.

  Sea mist was curling up from the quiet harbor waters, the entrances to the dock Cavern visible as darker masses in the gray. But the sun was beginning to burn through the fog, and Menolly’s weather-sense told her that it would soon be clear.

  As she strode down the broad holdway, mist swirled up and away from her steps. It pleased Menolly to see something give way before her, even something as nebulous as fog. Visibility was limited, but she knew her path by the shape of the stones along the road and was soon climbing through the caressing mists to the bluff.

  She struck somewhat inland, towards the first of the marshes. One cup of klah and a hunk of bread was not enough food, and she remembered some unshipped marshberry bushes. She was over the first humpy hill and suddenly the mist had left the land, the brightness of the spring sun almost an ache to the eyes.

  She found her patch of marshberry and picked one handful for her face, then one for the pouch.

  Now that she could see where she was going, she jogged down the coast and finally dropped into a cove. The tide was just right to catch spiderclaws. These should be a pleasant offering to the fire lizard queen she thought as she filled her bag. Or could fire lizards hunt in fog?

  When Menolly had carried her loaded sack through several long valleys and over humpy hills, she was beginning to wish she’d waited a while to do her netting. She was hot and tired. Now that the excitement of her unorthodox behavior had waned, she was also depressed. Of course, it was quite likely that no one had noticed she’d left. No one would realize it was she who had left the Hold doors unbarred, a terrible offense against the Hold safety rules. Menolly wasn’t sure why—because who’d want to enter the Sea Hold unless he had business there? Come all that dangerous way across the marshes? For what? There were quite a few precautions scrupulously observed in the Sea Hold that didn’t make much sense to Menolly: like the Hold doors being barred every night, and unshielded glows never being left in an unused room, although it was all right in corridors. Glows wouldn’t burn anything, and think of all the barked shins that would be saved by leaving a few room glows unshielded.

  No, no one was likely to notice that she was gone until there was some unpleasant or tedious job for a one-handed girl to do. So they wouldn’t assume that she’d opened the Hold door. And since Menolly was apt to disappear during the day, no one would think anything about her until evening. Then someone might just wonder where Menolly was.

  That was when she realized that she didn’t plan to return to the Hold. And the sheer audacity of that thought was enough to make her halt in her tracks. Not return to the Hold? Not go back to the endless round of tedious tasks? Of gutting, smoking, salting, pickling fish? Mending nets, sails, clothes? Cleaning dishes, clothes, rooms? Gathering greens, berries, grasses, spiderclaws? Not return to tend old uncles and aunts, fires, pots, looms, glowbaskets? To be able to sing or shout or roar or play if she so chose? To sleep…ah, now where would she sleep? And where would she go when there was Thread in the skies?

  Menolly trudged on more slowly up the sand dunes; her mind churning with these revolutionary ideas. Why, everyone had to return to the Hold at night! The Hold, any hold or cot or weyr. Seven Turns had Thread been dropping from the skies, and no one travelled far from shelter. She remembered vaguely from her childhood that there used to be caravans of traders coming through the marshlands in the spring and the summer and early fall. There’d been gay times, with lots of singing and feasting. The Hold doors had not been barred then. She sighed, those had been happier times…the good old days that Old Uncle and the aunties were always droning on about. But once Thread started falling, everything had changed…for the worse…at least that was the overall impression she had from the adults in the Hold.

  Some stillness in the air, some vague unease caused Menolly to glance about her apprehensively. There was certainly no one else about at this early hour. She scanned the skies. The mist banking the coast was rapidly dispersing. She could see it retreating across the water to the north and west. Towards the east the sky was brilliant with sunrise, except for what were probably some traces of early morning fog in the northeast.

  Yet something disturbed Menolly. She felt she should know what it was.

  She was nearly to the Dragonsong Stones now, in the last marsh before the contour of the land swept gently up towards the seaside bluff. It was as she traversed the marsh that she identified the odd quality: it was the stillness. Not of wind, for that was steady seaward, blowing away the fog, but a stillness of marsh life. All the little insects and flies and small wrigglers, the occasional flights of wild wherries who nested in the heavier bushes were silent. Their myriad activities and small noises began as soon as the sun was up and didn’t cease until just before dawn, because the nocturnal insects were as noisy as the daytime ones.

  It was this quiet, as if every living thing was holding its breath, that was disturbing Menolly. Unconsciously she began to walk faster and she had a strong urge to glance over her right shoulder, towards the northeast—where a smudge of gray clouded the horizon…

  A smudge of gray? Or silver?

  Menolly began to tremble with rising fear, with the dawning knowledge that she was too far from the safety of the Hold to reach it before Thread reached her. The heavy metal do
ors, which she had so negligently left ajar, would soon be closed and barred against her, and Thread. And, even if she were missed, no one would come for her.

  She began to run, and some instinct directed her towards the cliff edge before she consciously remembered the queen’s ledge. It wasn’t big enough, really. Or she could go into the sea? Thread drowned in the sea. So would she, for she couldn’t keep under the water for the time it would take Thread to pass. How long would it take the leading edge of a Fall to pass over? She’d no idea.

  She was at the edge now, looking down at the beach. She could see her ledge off to the right. There was the lip of the cliff that had broken off under her weight.

  That was the quick way down, to be sure, but she couldn’t risk it again, and didn’t want to.

  She glanced over her shoulder. The grayness was spreading across the horizon. Now she could see flashes against that gray, Flashes? Dragons! She was seeing dragons fighting Thread, their fiery breath charring the dreaded stuff midair. They were so far away that the winking lights were more like lost stars than dragons fighting for the life of Pern.

  Maybe the leading edge wouldn’t reach this far? Maybe she was safe. “Maybes seldom are” as her mother would say.

  In the stillness of the air, a new sound made itself heard: a soft rhythmic thrumming, something like the tuneless humming of small children. Only different. The noise seemed to come from the ground.

  She dropped, pressing one ear to a patch of bare stone. The sound was coming from within. Of course! The bluff was hollow…that’s why the queen lizard…

  On hands and knees, Menolly scooted to the cliff edge, looking for that halfway ledge of the queen’s.

  Menolly had enlarged the entry once. There was every chance she could make it big enough to squirm through. The little queen would certainly be hospitable to someone who had saved her clutch!